The title is Donne’s, and so is the argument. No man is an island; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. He wrote it in 1624 as a meditation on a passing bell heard from a sickbed, and it has since been conscripted into the service of every war it seemed to fit. It fits this one exactly. A border was moved by force on the European landmass and Europe is the less — whether or not Europe cared to hear the bell.
This edition assembles thirteen writers on the question the war was fought over before it was fought with weapons: whether Ukraine is a nation. Russian nationalism and the imperial story it tells about itself. Language, memory and the manufacture of national identity on both sides of the line. Journalism conducted under fire, and what happens to a press corps when the state it reports on is fighting for its existence. The mechanics of contemporary war and the devices through which civilians now experience it. And the older, more uncomfortable question of what sovereignty is actually worth to those who guarantee it from a distance.
Identity politics is a phrase worn smooth by the culture wars of comfortable countries. Here it means what it originally meant: the claim that a people exists, that it is entitled to govern itself, and that this claim is worth dying to make good. Circus Bazaar does not print consolation. This edition sets out what is being contested, by whom, and at what cost, and leaves the reader to do the arithmetic.
Featuring Asle Toje, David Crouch, Shane Alexander Caldwell, Matthew Ford, Zac Rogers, Matthew Blackburn, Vadym Yakovlev, Michael Soussan, Serhiy Tomilenko, Sanyo Fylyppov, Uliya Presnyakova, Alexey Ilin and Roman Kusaiko.
